Fruits of Vatican II I Observational Analysis of the Religious Memberships

Fruits of Vatican II I Observational analysis of the Religious Memberships A Willful Ignorance of an Ongoing Catastrophe? “By their fruits you will know them” Jack P. OostveenI and David L SonnierII I Emeritus Assistant Professor on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, Delft University of Technology II Associate Professor of Computer Science and Director of International Studies Pro- gram, Lyon College 2 CONTENT Introduction .......................................................................................... 5 Background ........................................................................................... 6 General observations ........................................................................... 12 Methodology ....................................................................................... 18 INSTITUTES GROUPED ACCORDING TO CHARACTERISTIC TIMELINES ... 22 category 1: institutes in severe decline .................................................................. 22 category 2: institutes in decline but eventually finding stability ............................. 23 category 3: institutes in decline but eventually reaching a slow rate of growth ........ 25 category 4: institutes eventually restoring pre-1965 membership level ................... 26 category 5: institutes eventually restoring pre-1965 rate of growth........................ 27 category 6: institutes suffering no post-1965 decline ............................................ 28 category 7: institutes founded after 1966 ............................................................ 29 Analysis ............................................................................................... 30 PERIOD FROM 1950 TO 1976 ............................................................................ 31 PERIOD FROM 1976 TO 2014 ............................................................................ 34 Conclusion .......................................................................................... 37 Appendix 1 .......................................................................................... 41 OVERVIEW OF RELIGIOUS CONGREGATIONS .............................................. 41 Appendix 2 .......................................................................................... 53 SIMULATION OF RELIGIOUS CONGREGATIONS ........................................... 53 Reference ............................................................................................ 67 3 4 Introduction The subject of the vocations crisis in the Catholic Church, post Vatican II, has been addressed many times in printed and electronic media, academia, and within ecclesiastical circles. Often those addressing the question do so to advance agendas that are not compatible with Catholic doctrine. We confine our discussion to the point of view in which Catholics are seeking a solution within the context of the teachings of the Catholic Church. This analysis has two stages of which the first is reported here. This first stage is an observational analysis of the development of Institutes of Consecrated and Societies of Apostolic Life for male religious from 1950 to the present, according to data available in the public domain. Although a statistical analysis regarding the number of religious memberships of these institutes and societies is of a quantitative char- acter by its very nature, it provides an indication of the spiritual quality of such religious institutes or societies and the religious them- selves: “By their fruits you will know them”. The second part will provide a more substantive analysis of the processes behind the observations that are being made in this first part. Now that it has been over fifty years since the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, we can see that some religious groups are surviving while others are stagnant or dying. Some inspire new vocations, resulting in an increase of the number of religious, while others lack such ability to inspire and are suffering a lack of vocations. The latter situation leads to a continual process of aging and declining membership that can ultimately be terminal. What steps can be taken to prevent such religious groups from dying out al- together? The authors assert that internal measures can be taken to strengthen the spiritual quality of these institutes. Observing the rates of vocations of religious groups can indicate the need for such measures. Genuine vocations that potentially seem to be “lost” to one religious group will often find a way into another religious group or even take part in a newly founded group. Herein we seek common traits among various religious groups by categoriz- ing them according to “timelines” from 1950 to the present. By grouping them among others with similar characteristic timelines, we can seek common threads among those which are thriving and those which are heading toward possible extinction 5 Background Statistics dealing with religious life are available on the internet, specifically at ‘The Hierarchy of the Catholic Church’ [1], and additionally in some issues of the Annuario Pontificio [2] from which a list has been compiled of 167 Institutes of Consecrated Life and 43 Institutes of Apostolic Life, both for male religious, containing sufficient data regarding 140 of these 210 institutes. Other databases available in the public domain, such as Agenzia Fides [3] (additionally by EWTN [4]), GCatholic.org (formerly Giga-Catholic Infor- mation) [5] and CARA [6], are restricted in the terms of sampling periods and/or geographic location. Among these databases, Agenzia Fides provides the total number of all religious for the period from 2001 to 2014 (Figure 1) and thereto additional to ‘The Hierarchy of the Catholic Church’. The Agenzia Fides does not distinguish the several religious congregations, but it sets an interesting distinction among various regions of the world for the period from 2001 to 2014. Kenneth Jones provides some statistics and analysis pertaining to the situation in the US Church in Index of Leading Catholic Indicators [7]. One of the first systematic analysis of the sudden and precipitous decline of the clerical population dealt specifically with the Netherlands [8], [9]. The Figure 1: Male religious 1978 - 2000 (EWTN [4]) and 2001 - 2014 (Agen- zia Fides [3]) 6 Figure 2: Overview of ordinations and resignations after the restoration of the Hierarchy in The Netherland in 1853 (last update 2014). beginning of a dramatic decline of ordinations became visible about 1963 for religious and 1965 for the diocesan priests while an exceptional increase of resignations can be observed between 1964 and 1976 with a maximum at 1970 for both religious and diocesan priests. Through this simple example we can understand the seriousness of the situation, depicted in Figure 2 to Figure 5. Though the Netherlands was neutral during World War I (1912-1918) and therefore not directly involved in this war, the steady growth of vocations was partly interrupted by this war and its aftermath, then again by World War II (1940-1945) and the aftermath and after that there is a visible post-war recovery (Figure 2). But throughout this period (1853 to the present) of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands, there is nothing quite as dramatic as the decline that begins in 1963. In other words, the damage caused by World Wars I and II was negligible compared to the devastation beginning with and following the Second Vatican Council. Coincidentally, the dramatic decline in ordinations of religious started with the publication of the Council Document on the Liturgy ‘Sacrosanctum Concilium’, after which, in 1963, liturgical experiments started in the Nether- lands that were then still illicit. The most active experimenters were the religious. Here, Figure 2 shows a decline of religious ordinations of about 300 in 1962 to about 25 in 1970 and less than 5 a year after 1975. These liturgical experiments started in 1965 at the diocesan seminaries, after these experi- 7 ments became legal. All seminarians were obliged to attend these experiments. They did not just have to observe them; they had to participate in them too. Through numerous witnesses, as well as by statistical data, it is well known that many vocations were lost due to these liturgical experiments. Seminarians lost their vocations to the point that the number of diocesan ordinations went from around 80 to 100 before 1965 to 5 or less after 1969. Also note that it is during this post 1963 era that, in addition to the sudden high dropout rate of the seminarians, we begin to see mass resignations from the priesthood. All of this results in a serious decline in the number of priests who were active in the Dutch dioceses (Figure 3). Comparing Figure 2 with Figure 3, we can see that the decline of the number of priests must be considered as a secondary effect of the dramatic decline of ordinations. In the same way it can be observed in Figure 4 that the number of baptized faithful was still increasing till the second half of the nineteen-seventies. Se- rious decline did not begin until the nineties. While the development of the total number of baptized faithful has to be considered as a tertiary effect, we can see a manifest decline in Mass attendance already in the second half of the sixties. The acceleration of this decline during the seventies has to be considered as a secondary effect due to the lack of young people. Figure 5 shows these effects on the proportionality between the numbers

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